How one writer turned a fantasy career into reality

Cocooned in a friend's house in Florida, grumpy and alone, Neil Gaiman made a discovery. The book he had gone there to write, a sequel to 2001's American Gods, was coming to him in only fits and starts. But from another short story an entirely different book was emerging, 2000 words a day, between cups of tea and hand-scratched notes.

Over time The Ocean at the End of the Lane grew from a slim novella to a full-blown novel, an unexpected surprise for an author who normally embarks on a book with clear intent.

''It was the only book I've ever written that wasn't planned,'' Gaiman says. ''Every other book I've ever written I'd say, 'OK, the next thing I'll do is going to be this', and I'd have thought of the book for years.''

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is due out in June and will probably be found in the sci-fi/fantasy section of bookstores, although sometimes Gaiman's books are in the children's section and sometimes he is in there with graphic novels and comics.

The 52-year-old Englishman has also turned his hand to movie and TV scripts (Stardust, Doctor Who) and he has even been known to sing with his wife, the American performer Amanda Palmer, or take to the stage with a string quartet, as he did in Hobart last week and will do again in Sydney on Friday.

It appeals to him, to try his hand at all the other stuff a typical novelist might not do, but he is cautious, too.

''When I was growing up, I think my heroes as writers were all people who got out and did weird things. But you're also really aware that if you step too far outside what you do, you run the risk of simply not being taken seriously as an author any more.

''You never want to be Clive James, who was a fantastic poet, who was a promising young novelist. And then suddenly I grew up and Clive James was that guy who was snarky on television about adverts and things.''

But Gaiman's many incarnations have also won him countless fans. They communicate with him regularly on Twitter, where he has 1.8 million followers, and on Tumblr, too.

They ask him questions and know about, for instance, the recent death of his dog Cabal as well as his deep love for his wife, who has a cult-like following of her own.

Palmer isn't in Australia this time, although her presence looms large.

He says he wonders ''who the hell would I have been if I'd never met Amanda'', even though the two married only in 2011. By then, as the author of the seminal Sandman comic series, Coraline, the award-winning The Graveyard Book and many more works in between, his career had been well and truly cemented.

That his life is fun Gaiman readily admits, but it is ''baffling'', too. Indeed, when his friend Polly Adams, daughter of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams, showed him an old photo this week of him with her father, Gaiman reflected on the decades gone by.

''If you'd told me then that all of this stuff was going to happen, I would have said it was some kind

of megalomaniac's dream,'' he says. ''I don't question it, I love it. But by the same token I know it wasn't why I'd done any of this.

''I'd done it all because I wanted to write, I wanted to make up stories. And my head is filled with stories.''

Neil Gaiman appears on Friday with the string quartet FourPlay at the City Recital Hall.

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